CBC News has learned about a dark chapter in Canadian history. It goes back to the 1930s, when native people in the Northwest Territories were recruited to work in a uranium mine.

Most of the workers came from the Dene village of Deline, just south of the Arctic Circle, on the shores of Great Bear Lake.

Toxic uranium ore was once mined nearby to produce the world's first atom bombs.

The Dene were never told of the health hazards they faced, even though the government knew.

Young aboriginal men from Deline, formerly Fort Franklin, were recruited to do some of the dirtiest work in the mine, 300 kilometres away.

Paul Baton, now 83, used to lift sacks of uranium ore onto boats. He said workers dressed in casual clothes and uranium dust covered the men like flour.

The Eldorado Mine was opened and run by Ottawa in the 1930's. It supplied the raw materials used to make the atomic bombs that fell on Japan a decade later.

Baton says workers, natives and non-natives, were never told of the risks of exposure to radioactivity.

Years later, says Baton, people began dying prematurely of cancer. In 1991, a federal health survey found Deline had more illness than any other aboriginal community in Canada.

People in Deline say what's most frustrating is that after so many years and so much illness, they still don't think they're getting straight answers from the Canadian government about the hazards peopole faced working in and around the mine.

Documents obtained by CBC suggest Ottawa knew as early as 1932 that precautions should be taken in handling radioactive materials:

The Department of Mines annual report states: "The ingestion of small amounts of radioactive dust or emanation over a long period..eventually may have serious consequences...(including) lung cancer, bone necrosis and rapid anaemia."

That vital health information wasn't shared with uranium workers has shaken members of the Deline band council.